Mad Hatter

CHAPTER 15

The drive to Horsham by police-van was distinguished by a total absence of conversation, Cribb hunched in the corner seat, eyes fixed on the window but seeing nothing of the passing countryside, Thackeray busying himself wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, straightening his necktie and retying his boot-laces. After a little over an hour the driver reined outside The Fortune of War, a small hotel on the Guildford Road, some three-quarters of a mile beyond the town. Cribb’s brown study came to a decisive end. ‘Come, Thackeray! We’re late enough on the scene as it is.’

The constable on duty in the foyer, not having seen the police-van’s arrival, raised a cautionary hand, which snaked resourcefully into a salute as Thackeray muttered, ‘The Yard,’ and Cribb stalked past. Ahead, a white card was suspended from the door-knob of one of the two lounges. It announced with apologies that patrons were temporarily requested to refrain from using the room. Cribb advanced on the door as if this were an invitation, opened it, and found a police inspector, a manifestly disconcerted hotel manager and Dr. Prothero.

‘Scotland Yard?’ echoed the inspector, after Cribb had explained who he was. ‘It was you that asked us to have men available, then. A notable feat of anticipation, Sergeant. I only wish that you had warned us to expect something as sanguinary as this. Had we known-‘ ‘Had I known, I’d have prevented the boy from leaving Brighton,’ said Cribb. ‘You’ve established the circumstances surrounding his death, I expect, sir?’

‘I have indeed. The facts are these, Sergeant. This gentleman, Dr. Prothero, and his son arrived here at about ten minutes after twelve o’clock and arranged for their horses to be watered. They then ordered lunch and had glasses of sherry in the ante-room while it was being prepared. At a quarter to one they took their places in the dining-room, which was otherwise empty. They were served the following-and I shall now refer to my notebook, because the details may well be important- tomato soup, followed by roast beef, with roast potatoes, buttered parsnips, Brussels sprouts, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and horse-radish sauce, followed by apple charlotte with cream, followed by coffee. It was some twenty minutes after the coffee was served that the boy displayed symptoms of unease-not indigestion, as one might suppose after a substantial meal, but shortness of breath. This seemed at first to be the consequence of an over-enthusiastic inhalation of snuff, but it soon became apparent that something much worse was the matter. Within ten minutes he was dead. There was nothing that Dr. Prothero or Mr. Wood, here, the manager, could do to save him. The doctor, I think, can best describe the nature of the collapse-if that is not too distressing, sir.’

Certainly the strain of a severe shock showed in Prothero’s face. He looked at no one, and addressed his account of his son’s death to the back of his hand, which he turned in several positions as he was talking, as if it held some clue to the tragedy. ‘Guy died of an acute attack of asthma. The onset was very sudden: a short period of restlessness, then accelerated breathing accompanied by coughing and retching. We supported him and loosened his clothing and endeavoured to calm him, but the respiration became progressively slower and more laboured, with severe broncho-spasms. Within minutes there were several convulsions and he stopped breathing.’

There was a pause before Cribb asked, ‘Were the first symptoms you described consistent with other attacks of asthma Guy had experienced?’

Prothero replied in the same automatic way, without a glance in Cribb’s direction. ‘Generally similar, yes. There had been nothing so severe before. On previous occasions I have injected atropine to prevent constriction of the bronchioles, but on this occasion I had none of my equipment with me.’

‘How do you account for so sudden an attack?’

‘There is no accounting for asthma,’ said Prothero. ‘We in the profession are only too conscious of the limitations in our knowledge. A hundred different things might have provoked the attack. The most negligible, intangible things-animal emanations, for example. The late Dr. Hyde Salter, the author of the standard work on the subject, was himself asthmatic and established a definite relationship between his own asthma and the presence of a cat.’

‘Our cats are never allowed in the lounges,’ protested the manager at once.

‘That was merely an example,’ said Prothero wearily. ‘There may be a hundred other agents of the complaint. Pollen, for instance, is known to induce hay-fever.’

The inspector looked up with the suddenness indicative of an inspiration. ‘Do you think that the horses-‘

‘He has ridden horses since he was a small child,’ said Prothero, ‘and never suffered a reaction. Nor is there likely to be any connection with the meal which you have recorded so slavishly in your pocket-book. Asthma is a respiratory disorder, not a digestive one.’

‘Are you quite sure, Doctor, that your son’s death was due to asthma?’ asked Cribb.

‘Haven’t I indicated that already? I know what I am talking about, Sergeant. I have written a dozen monographs on the subject. Examine the boy’s body and you will find the classic indications of asthmatic death: the slightly bluish tinge to the colouring, the clammy feel of the skin arising from the heavy perspiration and the quick drop in temperature, and the characteristic clenching of the hands.’

Cribb went to the ottoman, lifted the sheet that had been draped over Guy’s body and verified everything Prothero had said.

‘I shall therefore make out a death certificate indicating that he died from natural causes,’ said Prothero.

‘And I shall ask the coroner for authority for a post mortem examination,’ said Cribb. ‘The circumstances warrant it, sir, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. And in the meantime I shall be obliged if you will advise me of all your movements so that I may keep in touch with you.’

‘I propose to return to Dorking,’ said Prothero, ‘and I shall be there until further notice.’ And he added in a lower tone, ‘With your permission, of course, Sergeant Cribb.’

After Prothero had left the room, with the manager in tow, probably mindful of the unpaid bill, the inspector asked Cribb, ‘What do you expect to get from a post mortem? It’s a clear case of asthma.’

‘Looks like that, sir.’

‘Surely you don’t expect to prove that it was induced in some way? You’d never convince a jury of that, Sergeant.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well in that case I’m damned if I can see the point of going to the trouble of a post mortem examination.’

‘That’s where we differ, then, sir. I suppose I see it from another point of view. Today I was ready to arrest Guy Prothero for the Brighton beach murder. The boy was a homicidal maniac. I should have arrested him a week ago if I hadn’t had to grope my way through a welter of false statements invented by his family. Quite apart from any protective sentiments the Protheros had towards him, their own livelihood was at stake, you see. Respectable general practice in a country town-imagine the effect of a sensational murder trial on that. Now in my experience people of their station in life generally have a way of dealing with the member of the family who threatens to create a scandal; there’s private institutions that cater for almost any human aberration you can think of if someone’s prepared to pay. Guy Prothero would probably have been committed to some asylum for the well-to-do if he hadn’t gone as far as murder. That altered things. When it gets as serious as that, the law can’t be bought off, you see. Justice has to run its course. Oh, they wriggled and squirmed and tried to avoid it, but I was closing in day by day. And, as I tell you, I was ready to make the arrest today. What happens? The boy suffers a fatal attack of asthma on the way home. If that sounds like pure chance to you, sir, you’re entitled to believe it. If you tell me asthmatic death can’t be induced, I’ll take your word for it, but that won’t stop me from using every means at my disposal to ascertain whether it was asthma that killed Guy Prothero.’

Inspector Wood frowned. ‘You’ll find it difficult to get round those symptoms, Sergeant. The manager was there as a witness. I questioned him closely before I interviewed Dr. Prothero. He described it all in a layman’s terms, of course, but his statement bears out everything you heard the doctor say. It’s a singular thing to have happened, as you imply, but I think we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the boy died from natural causes.’

As if not one word of the inspector’s had percolated into his thoughts, Cribb asked, ‘What happened to the plates they ate from?’

‘Fortunately they hadn’t been washed when I arrived,’ said the inspector. ‘I had them put aside with the sherry glasses and the coffee cups as a matter of routine. One never knows, in cases of sudden death.’

‘Good,’ said Cribb, the gleam at last returning to his eye.

‘I’d like everything analysed by the best man available. As a matter of routine, sir,’ he added. ‘One never knows.’

Over a pint of half and half that evening, when all the arrangements had been made and every possible scrap of evidence removed to be examined by experts, Thackeray was sufficiently encouraged by Cribb’s more buoyant mood to observe, ‘You’ve worked out how Prothero could have arranged it, haven’t you, Sarge? It’s something the boy was given to eat or drink, something that could bring on an attack like that.’

Cribb gazed contemplatively into the beer-glass. ‘Just an idea, Thackeray. A memory of something I read. D’you remember the Wimbledon poisoning case last spring?’

‘That doctor?’

‘Yes. Lamson. Hanged at Wandsworth Prison for murdering his young brother-in-law. It interested me at the time because of the poison he employed-none of your conventional arsenic or strychnine. No, it was a doctor’s choice of poison, so rarely used that the lawyers could find only one other case to quote during the trial, and again the poisoner was a doctor. Aconitine, Thackeray. People grow it in their gardens and call it wolf’s-bane. The leaf is not unlike parsley, and the roots, if I remember correct, bear a close resemblance to horse-radish.’

‘Horse-radish! Blimey, Sarge! Horse-radish sauce!’

‘But let’s not leap to conclusions, Constable. Lamson’s victim took nearly four hours to die. Guy was dead within an hour of eating his lunch.’

‘A strong dose, Sarge?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cribb. ‘We’ll need to find out more about it from the experts. The symptoms, so far as I recall, begin a few minutes after the poison is taken-a numbing of the mouth and throat, obstructing the victim’s breathing. Stomach pains, vomiting and convulsions. Breathing becomes progressively feebler, and eventually death is due to asphyxia or shock. Close enough to Guy’s symptoms to make it worth investigating, anyway.’

‘Worth investigating, Sarge? I should think you’ve got it! He finally decided that he couldn’t save his son from the gallows, so he saved his own reputation instead by slipping him the aconitine, knowing everyone would think it was asthma the boy had died of. It’s a good thing you was there today or there wouldn’t have been no post mortem at all!’

Cribb accepted this heart-felt tribute with a small shrug and added deprecatingly, ‘The pity of it is that there’s no chemical test for identifying aconitine in the human body. It’s about the most difficult of all poisons to base a prosecution on. There are just two ways of identifying it: by taste and by administering it to animals. It’s going to take more than a few dead mice to build a case against Prothero.’

‘Could we find out if he purchased any of the stuff, Sarge?’

‘That wouldn’t help overmuch. A doctor might be expected to have some. It’s recommended as an ointment for use in rheumatism and neuralgia.’

‘Good Lord!’ said Thackeray, his hand going rapidly to the small of his back.

‘I’d stick to red flannel, if I were you,’ said Cribb. ‘Well, Constable. It’s time we made our way back to Brighton, unless you fancy one for the road. The sherry of the house has quite a kick, I understand.’

‘Takes your breath away,’ said Thackeray, grinning widely.

But there were no grins at Scotland Yard later in the week when Thackeray found Cribb reading the post mortem report. ‘I can’t understand it,’ the sergeant said at intervals, as his eyes travelled over the several sheets of finely-written hand-writing. At last he swept the report aside. ‘Not a trace, Constable. Not aconitine, nor any other poison known to science. Nothing in the food, the drink or the contents of the stomach. They carried out the most exhaustive tests, injected frogs and mice with extracts, tried the effects of all the substances on the tongue and produced not one positive result. It’s unbelievable.’

‘You said it would be difficult to identify the poison, Sarge.’

‘Yes, but a man was convicted last March on the evidence of less than a twentieth of a grain and our theory was that Guy was given a heavier dose. They were looking for it, Thackeray. Two of the leading pathologists in the land have signed that report.’

‘Well, what did they report as the cause of death, Sarge?’

‘Respiratory failure. The lungs were found to be uncommonly inflated. Constriction of the bronchial muscles, you see. Some retention of fluid in the lungs. Small haemorrhages on the underside of the diaphragm and in the viscera. I’ve read my medical books in the last few days, Constable. There’s nothing there that ain’t consistent with death from asthma.’

‘It looks as though we’re beaten, then.’

‘Beaten?’ said Cribb. ‘We’re on our own, Constable. That’s the situation. We’ve got to think again. Get down the file with all the statements we took at Brighton. We’ll start from the beginning again. We might never get Prothero into court, but I’m damned if I’ll leave this case until I know how he did it.’